s heroism and
unscrupulousness.
    The first sense of security following on Winnie's marriage wore off in time
(for nothing lasts), and Mrs. Verloc's mother, in the seclusion of the back
bedroom, had recalled the teaching of that experience which the world impresses
upon a widowed woman. But she had recalled it without vain bitterness; her store
of resignation amounted almost to dignity. She reflected stoically that
everything decays, wears out, in this world; that the way of kindness should be
made easy to the well disposed; that her daughter Winnie was a most devoted
sister, and a very self-confident wife indeed. As regards Winnie's sisterly
devotion, her stoicism flinched. She excepted that sentiment from the rule of
decay affecting all things human and some things divine. She could not help it;
not to do so would have frightened her too much. But in considering the
conditions of her daughter's married state, she rejected firmly all flattering
illusions. She took the cold and reasonable view that the less strain put on Mr.
Verloc's kindness the longer its effects were likely to last. That excellent man
loved his wife, of course, but he would, no doubt, prefer to keep as few of her
relations as was consistent with the proper display of that sentiment. It would
be better if its whole effect were concentrated on poor Stevie. And the heroic
old woman resolved on going away from her children as an act of devotion and as
a move of deep policy.
    The virtue of this policy consisted in this (Mrs. Verloc's mother was subtle
in her way), that Stevie's moral claim would be strengthened. The poor boy - a
good, useful boy, if a little peculiar - had not a sufficient standing. He had
been taken over with his mother, somewhat in the same way as the furniture of
the Belgravian mansion had been taken over, as if on the ground of belonging to
her exclusively. What will happen, she asked herself (for Mrs. Verloc's mother
was in a measure imaginative), when I die? And when she asked herself that
question it was with dread. It was also terrible to think that she would not
then have the means of knowing what happened to the poor boy. But by making him
over to his sister, by going thus away, she gave him the advantage of a directly
dependent position. This was the more subtle sanction of Mrs. Verloc's mother's
heroism and unscrupulousness. Her act of abandonment was really an arrangement
for settling her son